Sunday, August 19, 2012

Following the Path of Reason

The more I read, the more reaffirmed I become about our life here, and how we must care for one another. It doesn't matter where your spiritual nature derives its direction, I know we all are heading in the same direction of purpose, if we are true to that guiding voice. I got into this race because of my firm belief in the power of the individual. Each one of us has a brilliant spark of God in us.

Ron Rabenold gets his message out to eager Democratic
voters this July in Jim Thorpe.

One writer, Joseph M. Marshall III, brings that point home and how our lives are full of contradictions. Within us is the will to win, and the
willingness to lose. Within our hearts
is the ability to feel compassion as well as the smallness to be arrogant. Within us is the way to face life as well as
the fear to turn away from it.

Being on this campaign trail for many months has
shown me a lot about the people of Carbon County. People who wish to aspire and people who are
in despair. People who want to succeed
and people facing failures. And, living
in a county with the second highest unemployment in the state for such a long
time, people seem to be immured by the grimness of it all.

As a teacher who takes his mission to bring out the best in
each child seriously, I can see these contradictions every day. Our society has a responsibility to our
youth to engage and evoke the best within each one, whether that student’s
aptitude leans toward a technical profession, a service job or one with
entrepreneurial skill.

We have one of the wealthiest societies on the planet, yet so
many are stuck in a cycle of poverty.
The number one predictor of academic success is not the strength of our
schools, but the socio-economic level of the child’s family.

If we continue to underfund and devalue our educational
system, we risk losing important leveling programs such as Headstart and
remedial programs that boost skills at the crucial early years of a child’s
development. Some schools have not only
scaled back from having full-day Kindergarten to not having any Kindergarten at
all. Some schools have eliminated school
librarians all as a reaction to the deepest educational cuts in anyone’s
memory.

Show me how someone votes and you will see their
values. My opponent voted for the nearly
$1 billion in cuts to the education funding, the hardest hit area by far of any
of the state cuts last year. My opponent
also voted to allow the natural gas hydraulic fracturing industry to avoid
paying a commensurate royalty of the Commonwealth’s resource, as other states
have done, which could have helped defray some of these harmful cuts.

Hydraulic fracturing is in full boom in PA, while other
states are taking a cautious approach, PA doesn't seem
to be concerned for long-term ill effects nor does it
seem to capitalize on the resource for benefit of PA.

Opponents of a severance tax cite we will all pay more in
the end for the gas. This is not good
logic, as the price is traded on the free market, subject to global demands and
speculation. We are alone among states
with gas, barely collecting any revenue from it. Other states collect four to seven percent
and reap the benefit of lower property taxes from their drilling revenues.

What I find most disheartening of our current political
climate is how facts are intentionally misrepresented for political
popularity. My opponent states on his
campaign literature that he does not accept the state owned vehicle, a very noble
aim if you wish to truly save on taxpayer expense. But what he doesn’t state is how much he
collects from taxpayers on mileage and lodging.
In his year and a half as our state representative, he has billed the
taxpayer $57,794.64. Perhaps
the state owned car would have been less expensive.

Another time, when we both were
speaking to the Carbon Labor Council in April, my opponent stated that the
governor’s budget actually increased
spending in education. What he was
hoping everyone would believe is that by coupling pension costs with the basic
education subsidy it would appear to the public as an increase when in fact it
was decreased by approximately $800,000.

A July report from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University
School
of Law, a public policy group that opposed many of the voting rule
changes nationally,
estimated that more than 10 million eligible voters
nationwide live more than 10 miles
from a state center that issues IDs.

No one that I know, Democrat or Republican
wants to allow anyone to vote who doesn’t have the right to do so. Rep. Heffley stated that it is a problem
“seen in heavy doses across the state.” But
our current governor and legislature passed a measure to stop in-person voter fraud
when not a single case of it has occurred in Pennsylvania.

On his recent ruling on the case, Judge Robert E.
Simpson Jr. said those without proper ID can
simply vote by Absentee Ballot. But the ballot
clearly states only 2 reasons to be eligible:
1. Absence from your voting precinct on election day,
and 2. medical reasons. Is the judge giving his legal
blessing to ignore this legal entanglement?

It is estimated that 12.34% of the
37,777 Carbon voters do not have acceptable PennDOT identification. And by my opponent’s own admission, “voter
fraud cases haven’t been recorded in Carbon County”, he is sticking by his
decision to vote for a measure that could prevent some of our law-abiding
citizens their most basic constitutional right.
We have Rep. Turzai’s own admission the bill was passed to get Gov. Romney
elected.

This political climate speculates on fear and the game of
politics rather than working toward solid policy. This, in the absence of reason, is most
troubling. We must put this aside so
that we can provide opportunities for our youth that will prepare them to
contribute to our society in ways still unknown even to them. We must instill that education is not a
burden on our society, but rather it is the very thing that sustains it, and
causes it to thrive.

We need politicians who will use their wisdom for reason,
not for politics.

Featured Post

About Me

Ronald resides in Northeast Pennsylvania with his wife, where he writes and teaches. He serves on two non-profit boards: the Mauch Chunk Historical Society and the Mauch Chunk Museum and Cultural Center. Ronald and Kim have raised two sons who are now making their own way into the world.